From the lab carousels

What are your objectives in a lab carousel?


  • Learn different types of labs

  • Exposure to different lab procedures for different science topics
  • Practise techniques and safety procedures and using different lab materials

  • Promote student interest
  • Learn from others
  • New ideas, ways of thinking
  • Novel approaches
  • Refresh lab skills
  • Feedback, improvement
  • Practise
  • Find out what works

  • Cut down on time/resource requirements
  • Save supplies

  • Gain appreciation for amount of scaffolding required for students to initiate their work
  • Open mind to new techniques, ways of demonstrating principles
  • Boost efficiency in conducting lab work with students

  • Safety
  • Making solutions prior to lab
  • Pre lab questions
  • Getting apparatus set up

  • Learn from others
  • Gather new ideas
  • Refresh lab skills
  • Practise designing labs

  • Enduring learning concepts
  • Consolidation of knowledge

  • Learn key elements
  • Cover several experiments in a short time
  • Variety of approaches
  • Limited materials can still perform lab

  • To be exposed to a variety of demos and ways of presenting them

  • Work out flaws
  • Promote interest
  • Learn and critique

  • Proper lab technique

  • Have fun

  • Exchange new information
  • Efficiency and time saving

  • Experiential learning experience

  • Prior knowledge and pre-lab ideas

  • Practice quick thinking and adaptability

  • Students can learn from their peers
  • Many labs in one class with limited amount of time

  • Hands-on experience
  • Compare and contrast different labs

  • Encourage development of practical skills
  • Engaging examples of STSE
  • Foster nascent inquiry and application thought pathways

  • Connect theory to practical, hands-n experience





What are your take away ideas from today?


  • Labs work better if you extend prelab into previous day/homework
  • Encouraging students to develop their own protocol before supplying one – strengthens application and inquiry skills
  • Scaffolding
  • How to improve labs
  • How to run a lab carousel
  • Provide a nice story to go with the lab
  • How to plan assessment before, during and after the lab
  • Students might get discouraged or unmotivated with long and complicated labs
  • Some very good lab ideas
  • Use an external ‘audience’ such as Merck Frosst –allow for an ‘authentic assessment’ whereby class skills could be used in applications outside class
  • Inquiry based investigation skills, chemistry knowledge
  • Inquiry based labs can be used to ‘extend’ a short lab or a lab with a lot of wait time
  • Labs that are quick and easy and where there is a colour change are more interesting. Seeing different labs gives me an idea of the different ways in which a lab can be structured.
  • It was fun! We should do more carousels
  • I like the idea of working the lab into a themed story
  • Participation, scaffolding, self-help
  • Got ideas/feedback regarding how to improve lab activity/writeup
  • Good technique to present different concepts
  • Can be a bit rushed so needs to be well timed and organized
  • Need to carefully choose the lab activities (ask yourself, are they possible to carry out?)
  • Safety is always important, and must be continually reinforced by teacher vigilance
  • Instructions need to be carefully worded without too much extraneous information.
  • A fun and low pressure way to introduce lab skills to students
  • Make sure the lab demo can be completed in 15 minutes
  • Visual is an important aspect (colour change)
  • How to run a lab carousel – they are a small quick way to get the ideas of possible labs – collaboration
  • SAFETY! (Goggles always)
  • Equipment limitations to find ways around it
  • Authentic labs – more engaging
  • Student developed procedures

HAVE FUN!!!!